Reference

A glossary of the statistical terms used across puckmodel. For a guided tour of the card layout itself, see How to Read a Card. All ratings are model estimates, not official NHL statistics.

Core units

Net goals added: The site’s common currency: how many goals a player adds (or costs) his team versus a league-average player, in calibrated model units. Usually quoted per 82 games so careers of different lengths compare directly; the team-page forecast tables instead show season totals (per-82 rate × projected games).
xG (expected goals): The probability that a given shot becomes a goal, based on its location, type, and game situation (strength state, rebound within 3 seconds, rush chances). Summing xG over shots gives expected goals for/against.
WPA (win probability added): A weight on each chance for how much it moves the odds of winning: a chance in a tied third period counts more than one in a blowout. Used to price expected-goal flow into wins.
rel (relative to context): Measured against what a league-average player would produce in the same circumstances: score state, home/road, zone starts, strength state. Since 2026-07 the components are also re-centered so the league average is exactly zero in every season.
rel-xG-WPA Elo: The engine behind the on-ice ratings: win-probability-priced expected-goal flow, measured relative to league-average context, run through a game-by-game Elo update.

Rating components

Overall: The sum of the seven skater components below. For goalies, Overall is GSAx per 82 games instead (the skater components don’t apply).
EV Offense / EV Defense: On-ice expected-goal creation (offense) and suppression (defense) at even strength versus league-average context, scaled to the calibrated marginal value — five skaters share the on-ice flow, so the marginal is ~4.4× smaller than face value.
PP / PK: The same priced on-ice flow on the power play and penalty kill.
Finishing: Goals above expected (GAx) on the shooter’s own shots on goal — individual credit, at face value.
Penalties: Penalties drawn minus taken, at 0.146 goals per net penalty, re-centered so average penalty behavior is zero.
Faceoffs: Net faceoff wins × 0.010 goals (fixed-effects calibration). Shown for context: post-draw flow already appears in the on-ice components, so this partially overlaps them.

Goaltending

GSAx (goals saved above expected): xGA − GA given the shots faced: positive means the goalie stopped more than the quality of shots he faced predicted.
xSv%: The save percentage an average goalie would post on the same shots; compare with actual Sv%.
Reb/100: Rebounds yielded per 100 shots faced; lower is better — rebound control is where goalie skill persists most.

Projections & simulation

Projected value: The simulation’s forward-looking estimate for 2026-27: recent seasons weighted by a 0.55 decay, age-translated using the skill aging curves, and shrunk toward the mean for small samples. The Projected columns on the site combine its three parts: on-ice value + finishing GAx + net penalties.
Projected GP / expected games: Each rostered player’s expected games played, from durability history. Forecast tables multiply per-82 rates by this to get season totals.
Projected standings: 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations of the season: 12F/6D/2G rosters built from cap sheets by projected value, team strength from the projected player values, game outcomes from a calibrated win-probability model including back-to-back rest edges.
Playoff %: The share of the 10,000 simulated seasons in which the team makes the playoffs.
Δ (rank change): Projected league-wide finish compared to the team’s actual 2025-26 finish.
Small-sample shrinkage: Career rates in team tables are regressed toward zero by GP/(GP+40), so a hot streak in a handful of games doesn’t read like a career.

Data conventions

Career weighted average: Career values are games-played-weighted means over seasons, not simple averages, so a 20-game season counts less than a full one.
Active players: The Players table includes everyone on a 2026-27 cap sheet who either played in 2025-26 or is on a current NHL roster — this keeps injured players and call-ups while excluding retired dead-cap contracts (buyouts, LTIR).
Cap hit: 2026-27 cap hit from the cap-sheet snapshot; contract efficiency on the cards is career net goals/82 per $M of cap hit.